NYT uses Smartphone Snapshot on front page

It is bound to happen. Just click the link here to see for yourself. Nick Laham's Instagramed portrait of Alex Rodriguez made the front page of the New York Times Sunday edition.

This was an Instagram moment where the photo in question was shot using an Instagram app on the iPhone. Is this the end of professional photojournalism as we know it today? You bet.

Even though Nick was a professional photographer, he was using a less than stellar camera to capture that image, this opens up a can of worms for Professionals who shoot commercially to earn their keep because it spells the doom for pro equipment makers like Canon and Nikon who count on Professionals to keep their branding up in the marketing space.

If all pros used only an iPhone to shoot photos, then why bother with carrying those expensive DSLRs and lenses? Don't make sense does it? It also opens up the possibility that you can use DCCs and even smaller iLC cameras like the Olympus EM-5 and XZ-2 as pro equipment.

The next thing that will happen is that you don't need to carry a DSLR to be a Pro. Stock image agencies will be licensing iPhone images rather than DSLR images and Nikon would have to file fo Chapter 11 not too far into the future (both Sony and Canon have much wider wares to count on to supplement their revenue).

This can be a good thing (for amateurs) or a bad thing (for existing pros) who count on their equipment to do the job of delivering the best images to a potential client. It depends on which side of the fence you're standing on.

I would love to submit all my stock images shot only on a Smartphone. It makes good sense since I don't earn enough to buy Pro equipment. Let's not forget that you don't earn very much from stock images in the first place to warrant buying Pro equipment.

For example, on Alamy, there is a list of forbidden cameras which CANNOT be used to capture images for stock submission. But the contradiction to all this is that you can submit NEWS images shot on iPhones and Smartphones for them to sell online to news agencies.